The Home We Carry
She has no hair. I walk in to breakfast, unsure of what to expect, and am rendered speechless by the sight before me.
She. Has. No. Hair.
I haven’t seen Catherine Butschi for five years now and I’m nervous. The amount of things we have to catch up on will definitely span the next three hours of our waitresses’ shift and already, I feel her growing tired of us as customers.
She fills my coffee mug and I eagerly flap my hands as she gets close. 4,700 miles! I tell her as she tries to take our order for the fourth time, did you know one of my best friend’s is biking 4,700 miles to raise money for cancer!?
I mull over the words as they come out of my mouth. 4,700 miles. I know a person willing to bike 4,700 miles in 70 days. It is unbelievable to me and I look at my life in comparison. The most I’ve ever biked was to Dairy Queen from my house and that was to get a Dilly Bar for my own profit. Sitting before me is a person willing to put herself through the extreme pain of biking from Austin, Texas to Anchorage, Alaska to raise 750,000 thousand dollars for cancer research
It’s astonishing to me, that our shared hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa could produce two totally different people. Her, a seemingly wonderful angel sent from God to spread joy to all those she comes in to contact with. Me, a less pronounced angel my mom says “will get there eventually if I stop blaming all my problems on men.”
I’m not surprised you’re doing this, I tell her as our waitress insists we order mediocre breakfast food. I mean, you’re Catherine Butschi, the girl who packed up a U-Haul full of clothes and drove from Texas to Iowa to deliver them to people in need when the whole city was under water during the 2008 flood. You gave up your very important, transitional summer of middle-to-high-school to help others instead of driving around with freshman boys like the rest of us terrible children.
I look at her intently. We were 14 then!! I almost yell at her. What kind of 14-year-old has that much initiative to tell her parents “this is what we need to do and we need to do it now?”
Catherine shrugs off my questions and insist I talk about myself, asking me about what I’ve been up to in Chicago since leaving Iowa. She stares on in awe as I talk about the shows I’ve been doing but I try to deflect her questions.
Mostly, I want to know about her trip and how she believes she’s going to bike 110 miles tomorrow, considering I’m taking her out tonight.
She asks, again, if I have any shows coming up tonight that she could see. I try to refocus the conversation, determined to put the spotlight on the person who deserves the spotlight.
The person who has already biked more than 2,000 miles across America.
No, no, no, I say, I don’t want to talk about me I want to talk about you. You’re planning to raise $14,000 on your own? That’s huge. You stand on the streets of the cities you bike through with posters asking people to tell you their stories? That must be exhausting. How do you have the patience for that? Please, please. Tell me more. I want to know why you chose to do this after getting a degree instead of joining the work force like us regular folk.
Seriously, I still can’t believe someone like you could ever come out of the terribly boring town of Cedar Rapids.
She cringes and gives me a look. “Don’t say that. You don’t meet people as good as the ones we were lucky to have during our childhood just anywhere. I literally got chased by a pack of wild dogs biking through Missouri. People in America, they don’t have it as good as we did.”
We go back and forth on topics outside of what we’ve done since leaving Iowa. Pop culture, the current political climate, how obnoxious Jimmy Fallon tends to be and how easy it is to do an impression of him.
It feels as if five years have never passed. We are still the same elementary school monsters sitting on All Saint’s playground except this time, she is acutely aware of the hardships of life and her role in helping. And I am struggling to get my thumb out of my mouth.
Seriously, I tell her, how do you do it all. You internalize so much of the worlds pain without ever complaining and ask for nothing in return. You take it all and say thank you. How can anyone do that? Especially someone in their 20’s.
We’re all pretty crappy people in our 20’s.
She stops in her tracks and tells me to turn around. I’ve been so excited showing her around Chicago I didn’t realize I was leading her to Second City. “This is what you do.” She says as she points up at the blinking lights on the marquee overhead. “You make people laugh. What you do is important, too.”
It is August 11th, 2017. I get in to an Uber with a driver named Gus and tell him my friend just finished biking 4,700 miles in 70 days. 4,700 miles! I tell him. Can you believe it! My friend biked 4,700 miles to raise 750,000 dollars for cancer awareness. “I’ve found Midwest people really get the job done.” Gus tells me as we speed past a theater I performed at the night before. “They’re determined and down to earth. I like the people from Iowa. They’ve got a good head on their shoulders.”
I smile. I like the people from Iowa, too.
Catherine Butschi outside of Anchorage, Alaska.
